in honor of Gay Pride month, I thought I'd read a book about sailors eating each other. sadly, The Wager features shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, but pin honor of Gay Pride month, I thought I'd read a book about sailors eating each other. sadly, The Wager features shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, but precious little man-on-man cannibalism. which frankly I found to be rather homophobic. the passionate hunger a sailor might feel for his fellow shipmate(s) is only mentioned glancingly, kept in the closet. as a society, I really thought we had moved past this kind of erasure. *sigh*
the writing is crisp, brisk, and efficient, similar to a well-paced Wikipedia article. I really appreciated how David Grann made sure to repeatedly remind ignorant readers like me that colonialism and slavery were actually bad. the murderous, micromanaging Captain Cheap (great name) has some similarities with my boss; I often wonder who she'll kill or micromanage next. I should put this on her desk.
okay, clowntime over. the book was fine and was certainly a pleasant way to spend a couple Sunday afternoons. the many hours of research David Grann clearly put in really showed up on the page, but never in a dry, pedantic way. this is a very readable book. it was interesting to learn that common phrases like 'under the weather' & 'toe the line' & 'pipe down' & 'piping hot' & 'scuttlebut' & 'turn a blind eye' were all originally nautical terms. the details about press gangs infuriated me. I loved reading all about the resourceful Kawésqar, an indigenous people living in Chilean Patagonia. and the verdict coming from the court martial at the end of this whole misadventure was very surprising! unfortunately, SPOILER, a delicious dog does die....more
this story of an especially appalling death in 1930s India is dense with detail and characterization. we come to deeply understand this small family othis story of an especially appalling death in 1930s India is dense with detail and characterization. we come to deeply understand this small family of English colonials: father, mother, stepdaughter, son, and his governess. the first of the novel's three parts gives the reader a chapter from each of their perspectives. depths are mined and the book transports its reader fully into its settings (late-period colonial India and then WWII England). and yet what makes the book so successful, and the mystery both so hard to parse and so satisfying when explained, is that there is an entire plotline that lives outside of the book's narrative. therein lies the mystery and the reason for the death. a parallel narrative that took me completely by surprise when it was revealed, a thrilling story with its own ups & downs, its own passions and heartbreak, a story that impacted everyone, and yet is never explicitly mentioned except in the book's melancholy closing pages. that this hidden history didn't feel like a cheat when finally laid out was an impressive achievement. my reaction was Ah! Of course! rather than WTF! it all made perfect sense, the clues and the tells were there all along. Francis King is a formidable writer, a magician when it comes to what he shows and what he chose not to show. the magic is happening, but off-stage....more
the effort is clear, the intelligence is obvious; the results are uninteresting. this is a supposedly atmospheric literary murder mystery, set in Pragthe effort is clear, the intelligence is obvious; the results are uninteresting. this is a supposedly atmospheric literary murder mystery, set in Prague on the verge of the turn of the 16th century into the 17th. but "atmosphere" is not describing an entire city as, well, yucky. "atmosphere" is not just describing gross food or the pustules on the back of a page's neck. atmosphere brings me to a place, makes that place real. for a setting like this one, it would be cobblestones and fog and eccentric architecture and the sounds of young partisans in the streets and coffeehouses; you know, the way a city looks and feels and sounds at a certain point in time. not just the way it smells! and not just the things that the author finds repellant. characterization was likewise uninspired. all of the suspects are Machiavellian gargoyles and it was surprisingly hard to tell them apart. I mean, one is really tall and another is a dwarf and a third is a High Steward and a fourth is a High Chamberlain, but they are all mysterious, condescending manipulators who barely give our unremarkable, equally flat protagonist the time of day. this does not make for a compelling murder mystery, especially when figuring out the murderer's identity is relatively easy. the literariness of the endeavor is perhaps signalled most strongly by its title, a musical term that makes little sense when used as a description of our pallid, ineffective hero.
critiques aside, the writing was actually quite good, in its way. it's like a talented artist was given a commission to paint a cityscape in bold, dramatic colors but mulishly decided to draw a black & white sketch instead. the result is a disappointment but the talent is still clear....more
You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase
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You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase, you will enter a still deeper layer, open and relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Cairo. I say: ONE As you focus your attention entirely on my tale, you will slowly begin to relax. TWO As you consider your role in this tale, your identity as a spy, your body and your mind become warmer, sleepier. THREE The sleepiness becomes a dreaminess. The dreaminess becomes a dream. The dream becomes a story. The story becomes many stories. Are you in these stories? Are you the protagonist? Who is the storyteller? FOUR Who are the characters in this story? Are they spies like you? Are they friends and lovers, are they enemies and conspirators? Their identities are beginning to blur. My stories are beginning to blur. FIVE The blurriness is spreading to the whole of your body, your memories, your reality. What is the waking world and what is the dreaming world? What is this place called Cairo? What is there? On the count of six, I want you to go deeper. I say: SIX You are bleeding now, from your face, from your mind. This is the sleeping sickness, the Arabian Nightmare. Your body is beginning to sink. SEVEN You go deeper and deeper and deeper, you sink into this dream within dreams. Are you lost in this story? EIGHT I am the storyteller and I am dead. Who is telling this story? Perhaps you are now the storyteller. Who are these characters around you? Perhaps they are projections of your own self, splintered and separated. What is this sick dreaming, this dreaming sickness? Perhaps the dream is your reality. With every breath you take, you go deeper into this dream reality, into your sickness. NINE You are dreaming you are awake. You are bleeding your self. You go deeper into these stories, into the Arabian Nightmare. On the mental count of ten, you will be in Cairo. Be there at ten. I say: TEN
If you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is dIf you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is declining; it has increasingly become a niche activity. Your niche does not make you better, but it does make you different. You are, in this particular way, outside of the mainstream - despite how well you may blend in with that stream. Pleased to know you, brother or sister outsider! The criminally underread Ken Greenhall is solely concerned with illustrating the outsider perspective. You should read him. He gets you.
Except for this excellent historical novel, Greenhall is primarily known - if he is known at all - for writing quasi-horror. His outsiders are either quirky mystery-solvers (Childgrave, Deathchain) or psychopaths (Hell Hound, Elizabeth, The Companion). No matter the health of their mental state, all of his narrators hold the mainstream world and its denizens at arm's length. These narrators often comment ironically on the bizarrely boring behavior patterns of normies; depending on the book, they then will shrug and ignore them, or easily manipulate them, or scornfully reject them, or sometimes just kill them.
Lenoir is another of Greenhall's outsiders: a black man in 17th century Europe, first a slave to art dealer/swindler Mr. Twee, then a freedman able to travel on his own. And travel he does - but still saddled with the friendly, gay, utterly amoral, extremely self-interested Twee, who has treated the enslaved and then freed Lenoir as, basically, his friend. Lenoir, an artist's model and occasional practitioner of juju (white magic only though!), starts in Amsterdam, travels briefly with an actor's troupe to Rotterdam, and ends the novel in Antwerp. The book is less about adventure and more about a fish out of water who wouldn't go back to his first home even if he could (despite his longing for it, and for his children); it is about a black outsider looking at the strange world of white Europeans, consciously and continuously rejecting being a part of that world, but still of it, still in it. Much to his frequent wonder, or amusement, or confusion, or chagrin. As the saying goes, white people are crazy.
Although a fictional creation, Lenoir himself is based on actual person: the model for Rubens' Four Studies of the Head of a Black Man (1883).
The story is both lightly comic and deeply melancholy. As always with Greenhall, the prose is superb. Despite this being a historical novel, this is not a lush portrait of a fascinating era in Europe. The details are often there, but this is a rather stripped-down and streamlined narrative, as detached and distant as Lenoir himself - but as thoughtful and as soulful as well. Despite two extremely tragic murders, the book is also highly amusing. Lenoir both understands and misunderstands the people around him regularly: he sees the heart of them, but often can't fathom why they must do the things they do. The novel is a study of an outsider who sighs rather than shouts at life and its fortunes and catastrophes. Sometimes that's all a person can do....more
Her whole existence dwindling down to a lone, barred cell. Why did chemists manufacture medicines that awoke people, when reality was dismal and hopelHer whole existence dwindling down to a lone, barred cell. Why did chemists manufacture medicines that awoke people, when reality was dismal and hopeless?
the author is a talented artist; her prose, the atmosphere, the style... she is in complete control of her effects. but what does that artist do here? she starts by painting a black hole, an unsympathetic heroine, dull supporting characters, vindictiveness from all directions. she chooses additional colors: the grey of an overcast sky, shit-brown. with those colors she paints an insane asylum, an ugly village and an uglier countryside, a factory, a decrepit mansion. there is no contrast, there is no difference. all is ugly, all is dark. she paints a tragic backstory, a neglected child, bodies burned, a horse slain, wives kept down, bad mothers, madness, molestation, murder. all is ugly, all is dark, the whole world apparently. the artist swirls the black and the gray and the brown together; soon even those unappealing shades can barely be discerned as colors, they are just a mass of dreary darkness. a monotonous palette. a monotonous experience. if everything, everyone, everywhere is horrible, then specific horrors meant to horrify become drab, meaningless.
also: while the Silent Companions themselves were often effectively creepy, they did feel like sillier versions of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. ...more
spoilers follow. but what is a spoiler? a component revealed. is that component reflective of the whole? is that component the heart of the book or isspoilers follow. but what is a spoiler? a component revealed. is that component reflective of the whole? is that component the heart of the book or is it just another part of its body? is it a totem that represents the book's secret meaning?
the boy goes back in time to visit the girl. into the garden he goes, the changing garden. he feels safe and free in this garden. "there is a safe house at every dream level, which gets populated with the innermost thoughts and secrets of the Subject." he meets the girl in the garden. the girl shows him the clock. the girl will wind the clock. the old woman has wound the clock. "Totems are objects used by the characters to test if they were in the real world or a dream, and they all had specially modified qualities which made them very personal." the old woman dreams. the boy dreams. the brother dreams. they all dream together. you dream, I dream, we all dream together. "...a.k.a. unconstructed dream space existing within untouched subconscious..." the clock strikes the hour. the boy hears the clock and goes through the door, into the midnight garden. there he will meet the girl, again and again. the boy moves forward in time to finally meet the girl, at long last, as they have met many times before. "Inception is the act of inserting an idea in a person's mind which will bloom in a way making the Subject think it was their idea." the girl is an old woman; the boy is a boy. they hug, for the first time, their dreams a reality. a happy ending and beginning are achieved.
Let's go back in time with the esteemed Mary Renault... back to Ancient Greece! Where people thought and battles were fought and women were seldom seeLet's go back in time with the esteemed Mary Renault... back to Ancient Greece! Where people thought and battles were fought and women were seldom seen and men were busy being gay with each other. Renault provides an amiable and sympathetic protagonist, the actor Nikeratos, witness to the palace intrigues of Syracuse in Sicily, acquaintance to lord of philosophy Plato and austere, stoical Dion and wretched idiot King Dionysios the Younger. Although much of the book details Nikeratos' day to day life moving up the ranks of tragic actors, as he travels through various nation-states of ancient Greece and Sicily, those anecdotes are more the context provided than the actual purpose of the story.
This is a novel about ideas and conversation and whether art should reflect baseness or should aim higher and whether philosophy should impact government and what makes a good ruler. It is like Renault wrote this while reflecting upon and then mourning the lack of true intelligence (let alone dignity) in world leaders. Her prose is deliberate, sure of its effects, and subtle with the many points she is making. Renault telegraphs nothing, which is particularly laudable given that this is based on historical figures. Her descriptive powers are also excellent - it was very easy to imagine myself in this setting. Those powers were given a showcase near the end, during the sole sequence where lives may be in danger. Her description of the slaughter of Syracusians at the hands of mercenaries while our hero and a friend think outside of the box in saving themselves was a riveting, tense, and surprising sequence.
If there is a flaw in this otherwise splendid experience, it is the lack of women. That is, outside of our hero's friend Axiothea, a fantastic character: a student of Plato who disguised herself as a lad to enter his school and a person who throws herself into danger to support a good cause. In one amusing scene, Nikeratos is chagrined to learn that the fetching young man he's been drooling over is actually, in the modern parlance, a sporty lesbian. (Been there.) Besides Axiothea, women are basically off-page, which is a disappointment because that mainly leaves out anything to do with the interesting and tragic Arete - Dion's wife and Dionysus II's sister, subject of a painting by Perrin. Still, the book is excellent. A rich experience, carefully paced, deeply characterized, and dense with ideas. Full of philosophy to consider, ways of life to imagine, ways of being to ponder, and dudes who spend their free time banging each other....more
The Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and bThe Love Pavilion was built by a Chinese merchant in Malaya. Within the Love Pavilion is an antechamber decorated with friezes of dragons, fish, and birds; beyond that room is the Golden Room, then the Jade Room, and finally the Scarlet Room. When the Japanese invaded Malaya during World War II, and held it for 3 years, the Chinese merchant was beheaded. His head was displayed on a pole for all of the villagers to see and so be instructed on the new order. During those 3 years of occupation, depending on the whims of the occupying soldiers, villagers were marched to the courtyard of the Love Pavilion and made to kneel there. 42 villagers eventually lost their heads in front of the Chinese merchant's pavilion. The courtyard became known as the Garden of Madness.
The Love Pavilion was written by one of my favorite authors, Paul Scott. It displays many of the virtues that I loved in his Raj Quartet: dense, sometimes hallucinatory prose full of vivid description - of landscapes, places, bodies, faces; characterization that goes deep, so that a certain understanding of his characters is reached, while still leaving them ambiguous, capable of terrible deeds; themes that are concerned with masculinity and femininity and gender roles, the shifting roles of colonizer and colonized, and the metaphysical: what is the nature of the mind, what is the purpose of existence. You know, light stuff.
The Love Pavilion is about Mysticism versus Rationalism. Mysticism is embodied by Brian Saxby, an adventurer always reaching for higher places, less-traveled paths, ways of existence not bound to tradition or by society. Saxby is first mentor to our protagonist, then symbolic father figure, then a person to be hunted; Saxby eventually becomes something very dangerous, murderous, a threat to those who would move on past the now-ended war, an animal in the jungle that must be put down. Rationalism is embodied by every other male character with a speaking part, not including our protagonist. Rationalism is shown at its weakest, most pathetically sentimental, most understandable, in Major Reid: a Good Man, a man's man, father to his troop of soldier boys, guardian of masculine codes, tormented by an inchoate guilt over his ambiguous past failures, a leader who views the slaughter of supposed enemies as a pleasant daytime activity, character-building for his young lions, much like the enjoyment he provides them in the evening: the whores who shall visit and pamper them in the Love Pavilion.
The Love Pavilion's protagonist is Tom Brent, who must find his own way between these two paths. He is a compelling, frustrating, wounded, relatable character. Although perhaps most relatable to... men. This is a man's book in that all women are viewed through a certain lens of condescension by its characters. They exist to please and sometimes irritate men. A man's needs include sexual gratification and it is expected that the Malay women shall provide this on demand. Even relatable Tom feels this, at one point asking his boss Greystone - another Rational Man - if he could have a girl assigned to him during his time working the land, a village girl who can cook his meals, handle his laundry, service his sexual needs at end of day. He asks this as casually as a person would ask for a towel to dry themselves after bathing. Only one man in this novel does not think of women this way: the murderous mystic, Brian Saxby.
The Love Pavilion's love interest is Teena Chang, biracial, mistress of the whores of the Love Pavilion, a whore herself. Teena has two faces that she displays to signal how she will be engaging with her clients: her European mood and her Chinese mood. These faces, these moods, are alternately Rational and Mystical. She puts them on and takes them off as she sees fit. Teena, unlike each and every other male character, recognizes that such moods, such ideas, should not be the sole attribute of any person, they should be adopted as needed, and discarded in the same way. Teena's world is a small one, purposely so; a world that is not concerned with the loftier goals of Mysticism and Rationalism. Of course, Tom falls quickly and deeply in love with Teena. Of course, Teena must die. There is only room for binary thinking in the great big world of men, the men who would create and use the Love Pavilion as they see fit....more
A violently intense Victorian romance, if you can even call it a romance. This book is up there with As Meat Loves Salt & Endless Love & The Silver DeA violently intense Victorian romance, if you can even call it a romance. This book is up there with As Meat Loves Salt & Endless Love & The Silver Devil when it comes to its horrifying, over the top antihero, the over the top emotions on display, and its lack of interest in making its readers comfortable. While still being a rich, nuanced story set in a believable milieu and featuring prose that is sometimes elegant, sometimes eccentrically mannered, always literary. Wow bob wow.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book contains rape.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a very explicit and lengthy rape scene that comes out of nowhere and is not made remotely sexy because it depicts an actual physical and emotional assault, not a fantasy of a bodice being ripped and a girl saying no when she really means yes. this is a beating and a sexual assault, not a ravishment. the girl in question vomits at the end of this scene. because who wouldn't.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book lives in a world full of understandable, frequently relatable, often amusing characters in a Victorian setting where manners are as important as class status, marriage prospects, and money. it's all so delicate and subtle, so very Jane Austen. and yet TRIGGER WARNING! this book is full of deeply broken hearts and minds, brutal rape and dreams of revenge, of murder. and yet these characters tease and banter with each other, do comic and adorable things, play with children and animals, support each other through hard times, just like regular human beings do, and despite the fact that one of them was raped and another is the rapist. because no person is just one thing, even victims, even monsters.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a spilled glass of lemonade that leads to much else. is the lemonade to blame, or the humans spilling those glasses of lemonade, or the society that created humans who treat each other as far less than human, less than a glass of lemonade?
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a woman who is a rape victim but who is not a victim of life. she does not 'get over' this rape but it also does not define her. this woman fights with all the tools she has at her disposal, she holds grudges, she doesn't excuse her rapist, she is bitter about the injustice of her experience. that bitterness does not magically turn into understanding in order to satisfy any reader who just wants her to move on and see the man inside the beast so that they can have a happy sexy romance; nor does that bitterness turn into the sole motivation for her existence so that the reader can have a satisfying revenge drama.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a man who is a monstrous rapist but who is not a monster in life. he recognizes that what he did was not just out of character, it was evil: an act for which he needs to atone. and yet he continues to act cruelly, as cruel as he was before the rape, because recognizing that an act is evil does not automatically change a person. he wants to atone but he has other things that consume him: he is living in a revenge drama of his own, he wants to rush past atonement because he has not recognized that devoting his life to destroying a villain is in fact destroying his own life by becoming a villain.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book does not paint its lead characters as victim or monster. each person is capable of kindness, of cruelty. each human is the sum of many parts.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book is not really about a woman falling in love or a man carrying out revenge or vice versa, although all four things are roughly the plot of this book. it is not really about the terrible abuses that happened in the childhood of a man and in the adulthood of a woman. it has other things on its mind. sometimes you don't get over the things that happened to you but you can make sure that those things don't define you. you can grow and transform who you are, even if that transformation is internal. and you may be able to change yourself but it will be harder to change another person, let alone change the world, because TRIGGER WARNING! this book is also about how sometimes we don't get what we want, not right away, maybe never, maybe not in the way that we wanted. but sometimes a person can forgive, if there is actual atonement. sometimes a rapist can become worthy of love. and sometimes a villain doesn't get their due. life isn't a revenge novel and the bad guys often don't get punished and injustices sometimes remain injustices. TRIGGER WARNING! this book is about how a life can't be lived solely by living inside of your head, by continually revisiting your sorrows and anger and trauma. you have to live for other things; that is how a person who has been abused learns to cope with life. understanding that lesson is how our abused heroine and our abused hero eventually find grace, with each other and most importantly, within themselves. that is what this physically and emotional brutal book is all about.
TRIGGER WARNING! this book has a happy ending....more
what happens when a hunky barbarian traveling home to the land of Franks meets a sexy senorita from Constantinople on a super secret spy mission? Byzawhat happens when a hunky barbarian traveling home to the land of Franks meets a sexy senorita from Constantinople on a super secret spy mission? Byzantine fireworks! this historical was a lot of fun. Cecelia Holland writes calmly, gracefully, somewhat somberly, and so - rather sadly - there is not even a whiff of camp to be found. but that's fine. this is not a trashy adventure but instead an enjoyable drama, detailing the internecine politics taking place during the reign of the last (and only) Byzantine Empress, the formidable Irene of Athens. poor Theophano just wants to serve her queen. poor Hagan just wants to avenge the murder of his brother. poor Nicephorus just wants to do his job as royal treasurer and keep the empire solvent. poor Ishmael just wants to finally beat that bastard Prince Michael in the races and finally earn the precious belt of gold. and mean Irene just wants her city strong and her enemy humiliated - namely, the sadistic nobleman John Cerulis, a really hissable villain.
it'll all end in sorrow, screaming, and slaughter because hey this is the Byzantine Empire and despite their love of opulence and taking it easy, the Byzantines can definitely get real when it comes to hatching plots that lead to everyone killing each other. all of the major characters have a winning appeal to them, even the thin-skinned charioteer with his brief descent into religious fanaticism, ugh gross, and maybe least of all our tow-headed fighting machine of a hero. but fortunately the most interesting of all these mainly sympathetic characters is the ruthless Irene. the author really nailed it with her portrait of this very colorful, larger than life, yet still very layered character - one who has been the victim of misogynist historians throughout time. although her bad reputation may also be due to her decision to have her annoying son's eyes gouged out at the dawn of her career. not that I'm judging, he sounded like a pretty uptight kinda guy and plus a queen's gotta do what a queen's gotta do when they get down to claim that crown....more
Beautiful little jewels of stories, of varying hue and setting. Fanciful mini-biographies, richly imagined, of diverse tone and mood. The masks of TraBeautiful little jewels of stories, of varying hue and setting. Fanciful mini-biographies, richly imagined, of diverse tone and mood. The masks of Tragedy and of Comedy, sometimes interchanged within the same tale. Wee concertos of shifting arrangement, from the Renaisance style to the Baroque, to the Classical and then to the Romantic, and on to Modernism. Marcel Schwob may have been taught in the Modernist school but his music embraces all movements, all lives, imaginary and otherwise.
These stories, or essays, or trifles, or charming, knowingly plagiaristic oddments, were written near the end of the 19th century and collected in 1896. And yet their irony and romanticism, their frequent nihilism and their occasional hopefulness, feel so modern.
They are all excellent, but my favorites were the sardonic yet mind-expanding "Lucretius" and the bit of fabulist whimsy "Suffrah" and the mean-spirited, frequently over the top "Cyril Tourneur" and of course the four pirate tales that close the book on a mordant and distinctly anti-piratical note. The final story is also excellent, if rather self-excoriating: "Messrs. Burke and Hare" implicitly compares the author's recounting of "imaginary" lives to the dark deeds of a pair of murderers who induce their victims to tell the story of their lives before murdering them, and later, changing tactics, enjoy making a dramatic miming mockery of those lives while murdering them.
I beg to differ, Marcel! Surely you're not as bad as that.
♪ ♫ ♬
"Empedocles" - in Ancient Sicily, a healer and resurrectionist is worshipped as a god; inevitably, the flames of Mt. Etna shall prove he died a mortal.
"Herostratus" - in Ancient Ephesus, an angry virgin shall bring fire to the temple of Artemis; and so proceeds to an evitable conclusion of torture and erasure.
"Crates" - in Ancient Thebes, a philosopher shall live as a dog in the streets; as with all good dogs, he shall rank affection over hygiene.
"Septima" - in Ancient Hadrumentum, a spurned slave shall beg the dead to intercede; as with all such lovelorn lovers, only death can cool their heat.
"Lucretius" - in Roman Times, a Stoic nobleman loves a murderous African; a lesson is learned about atoms swelling and joining and retracting, much the same as love and life.
"Clodia" - in Roman Times, a noblewoman is accustomed to influence and incest; a lesson is learned about how the toxic will poison their own stock, their own selves.
"Petronius" - in Roman Times, an aesthete moves from languour to spinning tales of adventure to wanderlust; a lesson is learned about how life is fullest when at its dirtiest.
"Suffrah"- in Fabled North Africa, a wizard tricked by Aladdin reads signs in the sand; alas, the gift of immortality may mean a living death.
"Fra Dolcino" - in the Holy Roman Empire, a monk takes the apostlic path; alack, the Lord's Word will not protect a band of thieving apostles.
"Cecco Angiolieri" - in Renaissance Italy, a malcontent nurses grievances against his father and against Dante; the nature of Chaos shall provide him a tumultuous life.
"Paolo Uccello" - in Renaissance Italy, a painter devotes all of his attention to creating the perfect series of lines; the nurture of Order shall provide him a life devoid of life.
"Nicolas Loyseleur" - in Medieval France, a judge tricks and lies to Joan of Arc; torture is his recommendation but it is the judge himself who shall end tormented.
"Katherine the Lacemaker" - in Medieval France, a woman's life is a downward spiral of degradation; a tortured life shall end in mud, in murder.
"Alain the Kind" - in Medieval France, a child of war shall become as those who kidnapped him; a life of thievery and murder shall eventually end in torture.
"Gabriel Spenser" - in Elizabethan England, a brothel's brat becomes a fetching drag actor; fate will declare that identity may change, but death comes to all.
"Pocahontas" - in the New World and the Old, a king's child becomes rescuer then captive then honored guest; destiny will decide that identity may change, but death comes to all.
"Cyril Tourneur" - in Jacobean England, a dramatist's life shall be dramatised; it is clear that Marcel Schwob had much admiration but little love for this strange moralist. LOL!
"William Phips" - in treacherous waters, a treasure hunter shall attain his goal; pity the man who achieves their goal and still has some life yet to live.
"Captain Kidd" - in treacherous waters, a gentleman shall become a predator; pity the pirate's victims, and pity the pirate himself, haunted by his prey.
"Walter Kennedy" - in treacherous waters, a roustabout shall become a pirate captain; pity the impatient corsair who minces words with a patient Quaker.
"Major Stede Bonnet" - in treacherous waters, a gentleman of Barbados shall become as his idol Blackbeard; pity the fool whose childish dreams encounter an adult world.
"Messrs. Burke and Hare" - in treacherous London, two knaves listen to stories and end those storytellers' lives; and so this author Schwob finds certain... commonalities....more
The slice of life is a guide, an instruction manual to understand a life. It is a bore at first, like many such manuals,
"Do you know what I mean?"
The slice of life is a guide, an instruction manual to understand a life. It is a bore at first, like many such manuals, like many such lives, when looking at the minutiae, when looking from the outside in. The life moves forward in stops and starts, decisions are made, love lives and dies and death is imagined then made real. The life goes on, and so starts another life, and then another..
"Yes," she said. "It's like a... dance somehow, a minuet or a pavane. Something stately and pointless, with all its steps set out. With a beginning, and an end..."
This is our world, and another world, the past world, and the world of the future. Life cycles on, history repeats itself, religion gives and takes away, the individual rises and falls while unaware of their place in that cycle, the causality of actions small and large, the rippling effect of one human upon many other humans...
"sometimes I think life's all a mass of significance, all sorts of strands and threads woven like a tapestry or a brocade. So if you pulled one out or broke it the pattern would alter right back through the cloth.
The author inhabits the characters and their descendants, this world and its antecedents. No attempt is made to make the experience an easy one for the reader, to make a described life come alive for any but the characters he has created, to make an envisioned world make sense for any but the residents of that world. And yet the characters come alive, as any life becomes understandable upon close and patient review, using that intangible tool empathy. And yet the world comes alive, as any world becomes comprehensible after living in it, after seeing that world in terms of not just differences but commonalities. Time marches on and time folds back in upon itself, the folds make something large seem small; but unfold that little world and its characters, and see how big it all becomes...
"Then I think... it would make just as much sense backwards as forwards, effects leading to causes and those to more effects... maybe that's what will happen, when we get to the end of Time. The whole world will shoot undone like a spring, and wind itself back to the start..."
Still waters run deep within Inversions, concealing strange schemes and fierce ambitions, reservoirs of grief, questions on the nature of humanity, loStill waters run deep within Inversions, concealing strange schemes and fierce ambitions, reservoirs of grief, questions on the nature of humanity, longings for death and for love. In terms of setting and scope, this is an intriguing outlier in the Culture series. Yet it has all of its masterful author's hallmarks: ironic and emotionally detached prose, an eye for the small thing symbolic of greater things, a fascination with systems of power and individual culpability, and an ease with ambiguity - in the slow unwinding of his mysteries and in portraying the compelling opacity of personalities carefully holding themselves restrained.
Inversions is a medieval historical saga rich with courtly intrigue that is actually a challenging speculative work of futuristic fiction, that is actually one small link in a glittering and ornate space opera chain that spans galaxies, that is actually an intimate chamber piece tracking important moments of personal change and psychological development, that is actually two parallel stories that detail the sociopolitical impact caused by two very different change agents, that is actually a tense and tightly wound mystery about hidden pasts and hidden plans and hidden agendas, that is actually an empathetic feminist tract, that is actually a classic Banks critique of the successes and pitfalls that occur when a technologically superior culture engages with a less advanced culture, that is actually a cheeky yet highly intellectual experiment in illustrating cultural relativity versus individual responsibility and morality - and the always painful collision between the two. This is an objective book about subjectivity. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the book has levels.
Unusual for Banks, there are also twin love stories. Both are subtle and understated, never taking charge of the plot. One starts slowly, moving from awe to lust to admiration to a despairing devotion; the other is rendered so discreetly that it is fairly disguised, until suddenly the masks are off and love becomes the reason for swift and necessary movement.
4.5 stars, may go up to 5 after I finish all of these wonderful Culture standalones and contemplate which were my favorites. This one is quite high in the ranking....more
Kinda hard to enjoy a "farcical tragicomedy" when it features an actual genocide. Tone deaf much?
Not a bad book by any means and the author clearly haKinda hard to enjoy a "farcical tragicomedy" when it features an actual genocide. Tone deaf much?
Not a bad book by any means and the author clearly had good intentions. The sort of good intentions that many bougie white intellectuals have when deconstructing race, personal tragedy, and large-scale atrocity. Too bad he didn't understand that playfulness is sometimes a bizarrely inappropriate and unempathetic approach to take when examining these sorts of topics. Especially when all three are combined into one rollicking adventure! ugh...more
➩ Brazilians really love to fuck. I mean who doesn't, but Brazilians should get some kinda 10 THINGS I LEARNED
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7 Things I Learned About Rio and Brazil
➩ Brazilians really love to fuck. I mean who doesn't, but Brazilians should get some kinda award.
➩ Brazilian women like it rough and Brazilian men are more than happy to deliver. This is of course true all over the world, but Brazilians are really on point with this.
➩ Brazilian police are inherently corrupt, secretive, eager to make some side-money, and happy to deliver torture and violence as they see fit. Sure, police all the world over naturally abide by this common sense code, but Brazilian police really embrace it - no shame in their game!
➩ The original tribal cultures of Brazil were without a doubt bloodthirsty, vindictive, and sorta stupid. Naturally this is the case of the original tribal cultures of all countries in the history of the world, but those original Brazilian tribal cultures really put the thirst in bloodthirsty.
➩ Rio was basically founded by pirates. Well this is a truth for every major city in every country, but in Rio they were literally pirates, like on a boat type pirates!
➩ Rio's residents are consumed by role/game-playing to the point that it rules and often ruins their lives. This is a truism for humans in every city but man in Rio those games will determine who you have sex with, whose girl you steal, who you marry, who you kill. That's gaming with stakes!
➩ The folk of Rio, of Brazil itself, are basically a superstitious, foolish people whose women are secret sluts dependent on men and whose men are jealous, controlling, and potentially violent. And that keeps things fun! It goes without saying that this is true for every man or woman who ever walked the face of earth since the beginning of time, but gosh those Rio folk really live the dream on the daily.
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3 Things I Learned About "The Mystery of Rio"
➩ Digressions and amusing anecdotes about the history of a place can be entertaining to read. But when all of those digressions and anecdotes are mainly interested in portraying how violent, sexually obsessed, superstitious, toxic, and ignorant the people of a place are... it really gets old. I started wondering if the author just sees Rio as some sort of colorful, brutal porn cartoon.
➩ Digressions and amusing anecdotes about the history of a place can be entertaining to read. But when all of those digressions and anecdotes eventually become the novel itself, so much so that the narrative is sidelined and characterization comes to a standstill and the themes get lost in the mix... it can get frustrating. And eventually boring.
➩ No matter how skilled and imaginative a writer is - and make no mistake, Alberto Mussa is phenomenally skilled - if you decide to solve your murder mystery by explaining it all happened because of magic... I can't help but roll my eyes a little. Um, isn't that sort of a cheat? Pretty unsatisfying....more
Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson: war hero and butcher, the toast of London and the scourge of Naples. Lady Emma Hamilton: model and muse and wife and mistVice-Admiral Horatio Nelson: war hero and butcher, the toast of London and the scourge of Naples. Lady Emma Hamilton: model and muse and wife and mistress, the toast of Naples and the scandal of London. Lord William Hamilton: English ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, collector of vases, lover of volcanoes, husband to Emma and friend to Horatio, a power in Naples and a joke in London. A famous love triangle: brave, tragic hero falls in love with the young, enchantingly beautiful wife of an elderly collector and civil servant who is all too happy to turn his head the other way and let things proceed as they may. And who does Susan Sontag decide to focus on in this historical saga of famous events and powerful people and troubled times? The elderly intellectual, the cuckold who wags mocked in the London papers. But of course that would be her focus. She was herself an intellectual above all things, supreme in her field. I love that "the romance" in The Volcano Lover's title is between elderly collector Lord Hamilton and the volcano Vesuvius. I'm glad he's the focus, the titular character. There have been enough tales told already about the little war hero and his larger-than-life paramour.
This is my kind of historical saga. It is precise, disinterested in generalizations, steeped in irony, has the occasional meta flourish, always avoids sentiment, and comes complete with a chilly, vaguely disinterested narrator who may as well be Sontag herself. Other readers appear to dislike this sort of story, the way it is told, the careful distance from its subjects, its ability to empathize in its own way while never forgetting to chart all of its characters' traits - including their flaws. And not the heroic flaws. The small, mean ones, the petty ones, the traits that make a person human rather than a larger-than-life hero.
If you are a film lover, and beyond that, a person who loves historical sagas, then ask yourself: which do you prefer, the sweepingly emotional films of David Lean or the icy anti-saga that is Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon? If it is the former, stay clear of this book! If it is the latter, then this is your Barry Lyndon, on the page.
Unlike the films of David Lean (who I also love), this book does not want you to cheer the heroes and heroines, to cry and laugh and swoon at the terrible tragedies and awesome majesty of life's rich pageant, to have a cinematic experience. This book wants you to understand what makes people tick, whether they are famous or not. This book wants you to understand its characters within their personal and historical context, every bit of them especially their weak points, their various villainies and heroics small and large but always human, it wants you to know them as you (supposedly) know yourself. This book doesn't even particularly care if you like it. It does not want to be liked, it wants to be contemplated, discussed, and considered as a probing dissection of how humans think of themselves and how the image of themselves rarely matches what is seen by others. Others who are not in automatic sympathy with you, no matter your title or standing or lineage.
Unless those others actually love you, of course! A person who loves you will love you despite or even because of your flaws. One of the delights of this novel is how much its three players actually like each other. They understand each other and they are fine with what they see.
Just as poor Lord Hamilton loved his dangerous monster, Vesuvius. It was the true love of his life. The poor man should never have left Naples.
Sontag has a reputation as a cold intellectual, and she certainly was one. That's a big part of why I love her. But this novel is also a humane one. And often funny, in its sardonic and at times sneaky-cheeky way. A humor that does not call attention to itself; an author who is amusing herself. My favorite amusement: Sontag's inclusion of characters from the opera Tosca as if they were real people, a real part of this history. The fact that they are straight from an opera and never existed goes unremarked. A snobby sort of in-joke, I suppose. Which I love.
This odd, brilliant novel would have been a 5 star experience for me, except for its very last sequence. The end of the book is as brilliant as everything that preceded it, but it goes a different direction in style. Gone is the omniscient narrator, in her place is a series of first person narratives from various characters' perspectives. Starting with Lord Hamilton's dying thoughts (incredibly moving to me), then on to those of Lord Hamilton's deceased and very loving first wife Catherine (quite a sympathetic character), then to Lady Hamilton's silent mother Mrs. Cadigan (quite full of opinions, despite her silence), next the scandalous Emma Hamilton herself, and finally ending with a very minor character, the revolutionary Eleonora Pimentel on her way to the guillotine. All of these parts are beautifully written, including the sequence of Eleonara's last thoughts.
But my God, don't end a book that is literally all about a bunch of entitled rich people by sharing the understandably contemptuous thoughts of a progressive revolutionary about to die. You can't pretend you are down with the revolution and despise the entitled after you've written a whole book that completely humanizes those wealthy, tragic twits. That's like making a big, fancy cake and then throwing it out with a sneer because you want to prove some kind of point about cakes being bourgeois. That last sequence certainly doesn't ruin the book, but it does completely betray it. Tsk tsk, Susan Sontag! Don't front, it's not a good look....more
An ancient Egyptian queen calls to our young and idealistic archaeologist, circa the 1920s. He answers that call. And so this strange adven
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An ancient Egyptian queen calls to our young and idealistic archaeologist, circa the 1920s. He answers that call. And so this strange adventure begins. At first it was quite familiar, in the best sort of way: searing dusty days, eerie moonlit nights, mysteries to be unraveled, relics and mummies to be unearthed. Our hero is a pleasant sort, growing increasingly intense the deeper into mystery he gets. John Knittel writes with purple prose flair, bemoaning the modern world alongside his idealistic protagonist, mooning over the romantic past, deriding small minds and respecting the native culture whose treasures are being carefully robbed.
And then the story takes a wonderfully bizarre turn. The queen is found and returns to life! As does her king: our hero's previous time as pharaoh remembered. More than remembered: the king is restored. The queen a bit less so, forgetful, but still full of passion for her mate. The two seek to flee this trifling modern world and to establish their own kingdom for two, somewhere far away, using ancient relics as currency. It was fabulous seeing through the newly woke king's eyes, the youthful idealism gone and an almost inhuman hauteur in its place, disinterested in petty things, his eyes only on the love of his renewed life, a reborn being both languorous and dangerous. The story became intensely romantic and bizarrely surreal. I was reminded of Algernon Blackwood's hallucinatory A Descent Into Egypt; the novel felt like a companion to Blackwoods' novella, if its protagonists had retained their more than human identities. A fun story of adventure became a weirdly transcendent tale of unearthly beings trying to upend destiny and change fate.
This should have been a great experience. This is a very original story. But there was something rotten in the narrative that pretty much ruined any real enjoyment I could have experienced. I had a small hint early on, when our hero embraces cultural relativity, scorning any who would judge cultures of the past, or would presume to opine on the inequity in past societies, on the rightness or wrongness of being born master or slave, on the deaths of commoners, on the authority of kings and queens to determine life and death. I had a much larger hint in the casual anti-semitism of various characters, the hero, the author himself. At first I read past those things, considering them unimportant relics of the past. But reading the biography of John Knittel didn't help; it was impossible not to link this anti-semitism with Knittel's later embrace of certain elements of Nazi Germany. The author was a complicated man and I am the sort who makes excuses for people, rationalizations, rather than dismiss them outright. Nile Gold itself helped: its Jewish villain is fully three-dimensional, the smartest and most sophisticated character in the book, full of longing, a complex and often sympathetic and entirely tragic person.
But about a third of the way in, I just had to wake up to what this book was saying about an entire culture. Ugh, anti-semitism! For me, having come from a mixed-race family in which neither branch were even familiar with Jewish stereotypes, having grown up with Jewish friends, having to ask those Jewish friends what anti-semitism and Jewish stereotypes even were, or meant, when I first came across them in college... it is the most inexplicable of all of the pernicious -isms. I still don't really get it. And yet dismissal, stereotyping, hatred of Jews has existed for centuries upon centuries. I feel like I do understand the roots of misogyny, homophobia, racism, classism, why such things exist. But anti-semitism? It continues to mystify me. How the world, throughout time, has managed to consistently vilify and demonize a diverse and vibrant culture is beyond me. My only reaction can be disgust and outrage. And so what should have been a decent book, full of interesting ideas, became yet another example of a stupid human messing up something good due to their innate stupidity.
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